LOS ANGELES — Bring in the noise, break out of the funk.
With milestone home runs from Shohei Ohtani and Andy Pages and eight scoreless innings from Tyler Glasnow, the Dodgers routed the New York Mets, 10-0, on Sunday afternoon, adding a life-affirming conclusion to a disappointing homestand.
The Dodgers had lost five of their six games before Sunday and went just 3-6 on the homestand.
But Ohtani’s two-run home run in the third inning was the 176th of his career (fifth as a Dodger), moving him past Hideki Matsui for the most home runs in MLB by a Japanese-born player.
Pages, meanwhile, had a double and a three-run home run in the Dodgers’ eight-run fifth inning. The home run was Pages’ first in the major leagues.
All of that was comfort food for a Dodgers team that had to swallow a steady diet of underperforming offense and spotty starting pitching on this homestand. Their starters had a 5.11 ERA over the previous eight games, leaving the bullpen to cover nearly as many innings as the starters (36 to 37).
Glasnow turned that around, rebounding from a poor start against the Washington Nationals (six runs allowed in five innings) when he was feeling ill and turning the clock back to his dominant start in Minnesota the turn before.
The tall right-hander retired 10 of the first 11 Mets batters and faced the minimum 15 through five innings thanks to a pair of runners caught stealing by catcher Will Smith. Glasnow allowed seven hits (three in his final inning) and finished with 10 strikeouts and no walks while becoming the first Dodgers starting pitcher to pitch into the eighth inning of a game since Clayton Kershaw in July 2022.
The outcome was decided well before then.
Ohtani gave the Dodgers the lead in the third inning with his 110-mph laser into the right field pavilion off a hanging slider from Mets starter Adrian Houser.
Things came crashing down on Houser in the fifth inning.
Pages led off with a hard ground ball down the third-base line for a double. After Gavin Lux walked, Mookie Betts drove Pages home with a single. Ohtani reached base on an infield single when his ground ball up the middle deflected off Houser’s foot.
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Freddie Freeman and Smith followed with back-to-back, two-run doubles. For Freeman, it was the second of two doubles in the game. Paired with two hits (and two walks) Saturday, it’s a positive sign after his 3-for-27 start to the homestand.
Grant Hartwig replaced Houser and walked Max Muncy. Two batters later, Pages drove a 1-and-1 fastball at the bottom of the strike zone 413 feet over the wall in center field for his first homer in the big leagues. Since being promoted from Triple-A a week ago, Pages has gone just 4 for 18 (.222) but three of those hits have been for extra bases (two doubles and the homer).
That was enough for both teams to flood the field with reserves to play it out.
More to come on this story.
